Spike TV's Bar Rescue Features Chicago's Abbey Pub on Sunday

This Sunday, on Spike TV, Chicago's own The Abbey Pub will be featured on the new show Bar Rescue. On Bar Rescue, failing bars and pubs all over America are dissected, ripped apart and rebuilt by consultant Jon Taffer and his team of chefs, designers and bartenders. We're not huge reality TV fans, but this one had us glued to our seats. Unlike your typical "makeover" show, Bar Rescue gives viewers a backstage view of the restaurant industry - and we don't mean chef's throwing knives, we mean numbers, blueprints and management. It doesn't pull punches, exposing health issues, profit margins and other things that most bar customers don't know (and might not want to know) about.

The Abbey, a pub and music venue on the north side, was enduring a slow, steady decline. Even given the exaggerations of reality television, this bar was a mess. Shockingly, Bar Rescue actually sent in an anonymous reviewer to spy on the bar - showing that bartenders were overpouring, the manager was ineffective and the place was a disorganized mess. An inspection showed failing refrigeration and broken health regulations in the kitchen. In five days, the Bar Rescue team had to turn it around.

The show, for all of its focus on interpersonal conflicts, screaming and the other staples of reality TV, did some real restaurant consulting. The average cost to a bar for a cocktail is about $.70, and overpouring was costing this bar a fortune. We're sure bar owners everywhere will cringe when that number is exposed to the public, but the show also discussed the food and labor costs of the average bar burger, which was costing The Abbey more to produce than it sold for.

We won't give too much away, but the new Abbey looks pretty slick. Unfortunately, it also looks just like the product of a restaurant consulting team. Early in the show, the team visits a wonderful neighborhood bar to check out the competition. It's authentic, comfortable vibe contrasts with the "new" Abbey, which is now unabashedly focused on up-selling fancy cocktails, cutting costs and keeping up the gloss. While this is the reality of the bar and restaurant business, it would be nicer to see a genuine expression of the creativity of an owner or a manger, rather than a consultant's vision of a posh pub that kinda looks like every OTHER consultants version of a posh pub. On the other hand, those places definitely bring in plenty of cash, so perhaps we should keep our mouths shut.

Whatever our feelings about the new Abbey, the show itself is both entertaining and informative for anyone interested in the restaurant business. Check it out this Sunday at 9 on Spike TV.

The Abbey is located at 3420 West Grace Street.